The Pew Internet and American Life Project has released yet another terrific report setting the blogosphere afire. This one shows just how many American adults are just not that into the internet:

According to this, there are about 23% of American adults who are really digging what the net offers them, 8% using it who are getting tired of it, 20% who use either mobile media a lot but not the net or who use the net but resent it, and then you’ve got almost half the population who’s curious but inexperienced, or just don’t give a hoot about the net.

There are countless ways to spin this, but I think the message in terms of reaching one’s audience is pretty clear: When you rely on the internet, and only on the internet, to get your message out, you are automatically eliminating most of the audience. Now people certainly ought to keep coming up with new ways to use the net to reach and coordinate fans (including fans with one another), but as we swoon over each and every clever new web-based campaign for this and that, let us not forget that unless that campaign also has some connections to things that do not happen on the internet, they’re looking at an audience smaller than they should be. The net is great, but so are other kinds of communication.